Efficient Ways to Learn Weather Radar Polarimetry

Introduction

The study of weather radar polarimetry is involved with inter-disciplinary knowledge of radar system, random theory, electromagnetic scattering, precipitation/cloud microphysics, atmospheric dynamics and meteorological phenomena. A comprehensive program, which is helpful for the success of the education, has been seldom offered by the universities. To meet the needs of research and education on radar meteorology, five years ago the University of Oklahoma (OU) established a strategic group, the Atmospheric Radar Research Center (ARRC), whose members come from school of meteorology (SoM) and school of electrical and computer engineering (ECE). The OU radar program not only devotes to a broad research of radar meteorology, but also offers an inter-disciplinary set of courses for undergraduate and graduate students (Palmer et al. 2009). Within the courses, a set of learning modules have been developed (Yeary et al. 2007, 2008, 2010).

As a part of OU's radar meteorology program, Prof. Zhang developed a course of ECE/METR6613: Weather Radar Polarimetry. It is open to graduate students majoring in either engineering or meteorology. Assuming that the students have known the basis of cloud physics and electromagnetics, this course elaborates on advanced topics related to the polarimetric weather radar.

Weather Radar Polarimetry Course

Name: Weather Radar Polarimetry (since Fall 2008)
Code: ECE/METR 6613
Former name: Wave Interactions with Geophysical Media (Fall 2006, 2007)
Instructor: Dr. Guifu Zhang
Contact: guzhang1@ou.edu

Course Outline: This course provides fundamentals and principles for polarimetric radar remote sensing through the understanding of wave scattering and propagation in geophysical media filled with hydrometers and other objects. Physical, statistical and electromagnetic properties of the hydrometeors are characterized. The relations between radar observables and physical state parameters will be established. Advanced remote sensing techniques (e.g., polarimetric phased array radar and interferometry) will be introduced. Applications of polarimetric radar measurements in hydrometeor classification, particle size distribution retrievals, model microphysics parameterization, weather quantification and forecast will be illustrated.